#askgermany

“One of them? Well there’s....

Germany Legalizes Gay Marriage In Historic Vote.

June 30th, 2017

(Angela Merkel dropped her opposition to same-sex marriage virtually overnight earlier this week, and her fellow politicians have pushed for a vote on it before the Bundestag’s summer break — which happened to be this Friday, today. German efficiency at its best, is it not--?

In recent polls, the more than 80% of Germans were supportive of same-sex marriage. The German LGBT community and parties such as the SPD have been fighting for this for quite some time now, and now it finally became a reality. Surprisingly, without any of us really actively working towards it. 

I don’t have much time to work on drawings right now as we’re in the middle of moving apartments, but as a guy engaged to another guy, this is something beyond important to me. It’s a big, very important step in the right direction, and I wanted to do a little something for it. I’ll most definitely write a more detailed post about our journey to this point once we’re doing moving.

I’ve never quite thought about which one of my cities I like to visit most... from my north to my south, they’re all very beautiful and special, each with their own history and identity. 

Perhaps Bonn...? Maybe Berlin, or Frankfurt... ah, I really can’t pick just one, I apologize.

(Thank you so much ;__; <3 

Germany really does have many beautiful cities aside from just Berlin, and many of them are really old with a long history too! Like Hamburg, which has been rated Germany’s most popular city in a 2015 poll, and has a history going all the way back to the 8th century.

Anyhow, Ludwig has trouble picking favorites because his cities are what make him who he is, and historically, many of them have been very important to Germany’s future - like Berlin for obvious reasons, Bremen and Hamburg as two of Germany’s Hanseatic cities [and now two of our sixteen states], or Leipzig for its mass demonstrations in 1989, that played a big role in Germany’s reunification.

According to this website, the 10 most popular cities of us Germans are...

1) Hamburg 2) Munich 3) Cologne 4) Dresden 5) Freiburg im Breisgau 6) Berlin 7) Nuremberg 8) Lübeck 9) Münster 10) and Potsdam!

I hope this helps you a little? If you want to know something more specific, please let me know and I'll try to offer a more detailed explanation. Don’t worry tough, many bigger German cities like Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin are pretty multilingual, and most people in those cities will be able to have conversations in English as well---especially younger generations, as English is a mandatory class in German schools, introduced in elementary.

(Please do keep in mind that although German sentence structure and grammar are overall quite similar to English, there's some important differences. For example, there are two different German pronouns for the single English word "you." In German, we differentiate between the formal "you" and the informal "you." Germans actually have two verbs to describe the use of these specific pronouns:  "duzen" and "siezen," so "du" and "Sie."

First off, there's "du" which is impolite and usually used for family and friends or people younger than 18. Then there's "Sie" (with the S capitalized too), which is the polite form of it and most commonly used for doctors, teachers, strangers, people you generally aren't too familiar with. For people older than 18, no matter their job or whatever, you may ask for permission to use "du" instead, or they might just give you permission right away. Dropping those formalities is becoming more common among younger people. Regardless, if in doubt, sticking to the formal way is definitely the safer choice, as some people may deem anything else disrespectful. Aside from "du" or "Sie", there's various other forms of the word depending on who it is you're talking to, and how the word is used. It’s much like he/him/his, except with “you.”. The reason for the different word endings is the various genders of German words; similar to Spanish.